I add salt and pepper to a glass of water and incubate it under my bed. Occasionally, I assay the concoction by tasting it. Nope. Still the same. Back under the bed it goes. Weeks pass before Mother finds it and dumps it. A major setback in my research! I start again, hoping to obtain later time points in the next experiment. Must learn to hide these better.

new hypothesis
the spontaneous generation
of hypotheses

When Mother explains how things work, it doesn’t sound logical. This time, I try flour, sugar, water, and spices and place my suspension in the back of the fridge. A damp cloth on top to assist in the transformation. The mixture becomes moldy and slimy before Mother finds it. Success! Now if I only knew how to interpret the results.

diagnosis
the preponderance
of the data

Kat Lehmann

is a haiku poet, a potter, and a scientist based in Connecticut, USA. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has been honored in The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Awards (individual poem), the Haiku Society of America Harold G. Henderson Haiku Award, and Japan’s Basho-an Award.

Kat is a Founding Co-Editor of Whiptail: Journal of the Single-Line Poem. She serves as a panelist in The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Books Award (2021-present) and is a judge in the biennial Trailblazer Contest. Her third book, Stumbling Toward Happiness, shares her notes of self-exploration.

Kat’s work, including her experimental “sudo-ku” multi-haiku form, can be read at her website: https://katlehmann.weebly.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Sensory Revelation Tank, haibun by Kat Lehmann which was nominated by MacQ for the Red Moon Anthologies, and selected for publication in Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022).